Family’s anguish: Valley Fire burned home, may have killed 7 dogs

COBB, Lake County — Amber Roberts and her husband, Jesus Cabezas, had been holding out hope since Saturday that their home in the small community of Cobb — as well as their animals, including seven dogs — had survived Lake County’s devastating Valley Fire.

On Tuesday came heartbreak: Everything is gone.

The couple were among many who finally learned the fate of their homes, their possessions and their pets, as authorities began escorting some residents into the moonscape fire zone where at least 585 houses burned to the ground. Some found relief, some anguish. Others still don’t know.

Roberts and Cabezas, who bought their two-story house in the hills south of Clear Lake two years ago, were not at home Saturday. They were watching their 7-year-old son’s first football game in Fort Bragg when they got news of the wildfire that rampaged through Cobb and Middletown.

Cabezas made the two-hour drive back as quickly as he could, only to be stopped short of his street by roadblocks and smoke. The family ultimately got a hotel room in Sonoma County and waited for official word.

Early Tuesday, the couple lined up at Kelseyville High School with hundreds of other evacuees for a police escort into the cordoned-off fire area — an opportunity for people to feed and perhaps collect animals they had left behind, and an opportunity to see for sure whether their homes were ruined or standing.

The couple was first in line, but once the county sheriff’s deputies heard exactly where they lived, they told them the area remained too dangerous to enter because of smoldering homes and downed power lines. That’s when they began to lose hope.

A Chronicle reporter accompanying the couple continued on to the home on Hoberg Drive — and found it was no more. Later, Cabezas, 38, and Roberts, 33, viewed photographs of the wreckage.

“There’s nothing left, nothing. We only have the clothes that we left with that day for our son’s football,” said Roberts, wiping away tears. “The doghouse is gone, too. I don’t know if any of them made it.”

The couple, with their son, Jesus Jr., and 11-year-old daughter Emily, had seven dogs, the oldest a 15-year-old Chihuahua named Chili Bean. They also kept chickens. But there were no signs of life at their parcel, just east of where the Valley Fire ignited.

The chicken coop was melted beside the foundation of their home, which was awash in ash and debris. Only a few blackened appliances and furniture were recognizable in the rubble. In the driveway, Cabezas’ truck was charred. A torched basketball hoop stood above.

A firefighter surveys the result of the Valley Fire on Barnes Street in Middletown, Calif., on Monday, September 14, 2015.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

“The things that we’ll miss the most are our animals and, of course, our home ... but our animals,” Cabezas said.

The family had no choice Tuesday evening but to return to their hotel. Their plan is not clear. “We’re just going to try to remain strong,” Cabezas said.

Fifteen miles to the east, frustration reverberated through the Lower Lake High School auditorium.

Just as in Kelseyville, evacuees vied for an escort back to their homes. The premise was to allow residents to take care of any pets left behind, but many said they wanted to assuage the uncertainty and fear that has plagued them since Saturday. They needed to see for themselves what was left of the houses, and the neighborhoods, they called home.

“We heard people say our home is safe, but we don’t know what’s going on,” said Nicole Martinez, 31, of her house in the community of Hidden Valley Lake. “We don’t know. I need to see it with my eyes.”

Hundreds of evacuees — many still in pajamas or the clothes they fled their homes in — filled three parking lots to capacity, lining up to sign up for one of the escorts. In exchange, they were given a number designating the order of the trips.

It was first come, first served. Martinez and her family were No. 71. By mid-morning, organizers were asking those with numbers higher than 100 to also leave their phone numbers — an indicator they might not be called the first day.

Rosalie Cooke, 70, was No. 174. She sat quietly on the bleachers with her four small dogs: Kuba, Ziggy Stardust, Paloma and Pinky. She had been camping out in a tent at the Highlands Senior Services Center in the city of Clearlake.

Her thoughts were on her cat, Phoebe, and her three birds back at her house in Hidden Valley Lake.

“My cat is very old, and she needs water,” Cooke said. “She had been neglected when I first got her, and I cleaned her up and got her good and she just loves me. It breaks my heart to have left her.”

Like many other Hidden Valley Lake residents, Cooke didn’t have a choice but to leave animals. One second there was news of the fire getting close, and the next it was there.

“Just as soon as I got the dogs in the car, the lights went out, which meant I couldn’t get the garage door open,” she said. “I ran up Deer Hill Road, looking for anyone that could help me.”

Luckily, she found a neighbor who jimmied the door open with a pair of pliers, but not before she witnessed the destructive force of the flames.

“While I was running up and down, there was another fire, and I watched our neighborhood association president’s house burning,” she said. “It burned before I left Hidden Valley.”

Her neighbor, Diana Boss, 63, was No. 36. She said she hoped to reason with the sheriff’s deputies escorting her, persuading them to let her grab some important items while she took care of her five cats.

Officials said the deputies would immediately end any escort if they caught a resident attempting to grab valuables.

Boss and her husband had been coming back from her niece’s tae kwon do tournament in Santa Rosa on Saturday night when they were turned around on Butte Canyon Road in Middletown.

She had heard that her house was still standing. But Boss said she worried about how her cats were faring after more than two days without food.

“If I didn’t have the Lord in my life,” she said, “I’d be losing my mind.”